The power of distance learning

Sometimes we get so caught up in the day-to-day tasks of our jobs that we forget the broader view. This week I have had the opportunity to step back and take a hard look at how distance learning affects students and schools. And the view is impressive!

As products of the factory model we call schools, many of us tend to take the school schedule for granted: start at 8, change classes every 50 minutes, eat lunch from 11:50 to 12:30, more classes, out at 3:30. Halls should be empty and quiet during classes, students work primarily independently and out of textbooks, are only allowed off campus during lunch, only fraternize with students from their own community, and tuck away their communication tools at the door. How does this type of schedule prepare our students for their future jobs, where they are likely to telecommute, work with people from many cultures across mostly transparent international boundaries, and use technology tools ubiquitously?

Part of the answer is distance learning. Distance learning provides opportunities for students to learn outside of the box. It transforms both time and place as well as world view. Teachers can be available during extended hours by email, phone, instant message, or chat. The teachers have lives that extend beyond the communities in which the student live, communities that for those in small, rural areas are in many ways extensions of the four walls of the school—the same people with the same opinions doing the same things.

I visited this week with students in Prospect, Oregon, a small former timber town of about 650. The entire school district has only 180 students. Their principal states that distance learning is vital to their school because it provides the students with opportunities that they otherwise would never have. In one room, two students were taking an accounting class via videoconference, while 5 additional students, working on computers along one wall, were quietly working on their online classes which ranged from Japanese to Algebra to American History.

Not only are these students learning the content for these courses, they are gaining valuable skills in the use of technology and communications that can not only expand their own world views, but help transform that of their community. These students, whose education would from outward appearances seem underprivileged by many standards, no longer assume that everything worth learning happens within the four walls of their school. Wherever these students go, they will be forever shaped by distance learning, where they are discovering that the scope of their experience is not limited by time or space. As future parents, teachers, community members, and citizens, they will never assume that all learning has to be from 8 to 3:30 inside of the four walls of a building. By working with these students, we are helping to shape the future of not only the lives of these students, but of education as a whole.

Thanks for all you do!